History of Julius Caesar eBook

[Sidenote: Ancient division of time.] [Sidenote:
Change effected by Caesar.] [Sidenote: The old
and new styles.]

One great change which he effected continues in perfect
operation throughout Europe to the present day.
It related to the division of time. The system
of months in use in his day corresponded so imperfectly
with the annual circuit of the sun, that the months
were moving continually along the year in such a manner
that the winter months came at length in the summer,
and the summer months in the winter. This led
to great practical inconveniences; for whenever, for
example, any thing was required by law to be done
in certain months, intending to have them done in
the summer, and the specified month came at length
to be a winter month, the law would require the thing
to be done in exactly the wrong season. Caesar
remedied all this by adopting a new system of months,
which should give three hundred and sixty-five days
to the year for three years, and three hundred and
sixty-six for the fourth; and so exact was the system
which he thus introduced, that it went on unchanged
for sixteen centuries. The months were then found
to be eleven days out of the way, when a new correction
was introduced,[4] and it will now go on three thousand
years before the error will amount to a single day.
Caesar employed a Greek astronomer to arrange the system
that he adopted; and it was in part on account of
the improvement which he thus effected that one of
the months, as has already been mentioned, was called
July. Its name before was Quintilis.

[Footnote 4: By Pope Gregory XIII. at the time
of the change from the old style to the new]

Caesar formed a great many other vast and magnificent
schemes. He planned public buildings for the
city, which were going to exceed in magnitude and
splendor all the edifices of the world. He commenced
the collection of vast libraries, formed plans for
draining the Pontine Marshes, for bringing great supplies
of water into the city by an aqueduct, for cutting
a new passage for the Tiber from Rome to the sea,
and making an enormous artificial harbor at its mouth.
He was going to make a road along the Apennines, and
cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, and construct
other vast works, which were to make Rome the center
of the commerce of the world. In a word, his head
was filled with the grandest schemes, and he was gathering
around him all the means and resources necessary for
the execution of them.

CHAPTER XI

THE CONSPIRACY.

Caesar’s greatness and glory came at last to
a very sudden and violent end. He was assassinated.
All the attendant circumstances of this deed, too,
were of the most extraordinary character, and thus
the dramatic interest which adorns all parts of the
great conqueror’s history marks strikingly its
end.